5/25/2005

Keeping it short.

*Oh! Alan Moore and money! Sink yourself in information here and here and here! What a day!

City of Tomorrow! #2 (of 6)

Amusingly off-the-cuff type plotting in this issue, as more details of the current day situation are filled in. I think the best little joke in the series so far is that after changing from wholesome to criminal, the artificial populace of Columbia are still living out a fantasy world. Instead of a cheesy ‘50s industrial film vision of peace and neighborliness (I loved the senior Foyle’s telling comment on how nobody actually remembers the era of happiness he‘s shooting for), they’re all ultra-clichéd gangsters in pinstripe suits and sassy-talking prostitutes. Only pop culture can inform them, even when freed from the boundaries of morality (but are they really freed, or just programmed in a more hedonistic way?)

The whole tone of this book is becoming reminiscent of writer/artist Howard Chaykin’s work on “Time2”, only without the magical elements and lots more technology. The family lines, penetrating into the drama, aren’t quite as deep either. But the neon-soaked gangster aura brings Chaykin’s admitted favorite work straight back to mind. Atmosphere is good for this issue, since a lot of cheeky/silly world-building takes up much of the expected plot space, with the warring clans of the Doppelgangsters and the Cosa Nanostra (*groan*) recruiting dirty breeders to help them gain an advantage. Meanwhile, ghosts from our hero Tucker’s past show up to make some grave pronouncements about the outside world, though their threat doesn’t quite pan out as expected.

It’s an amusing book, eccentric in its throwback scenery tastes, and bizarrely modest in certain aspects; I know Chaykin’s working under language restrictions, but why all the use of ‘buttwipe’? Perhaps we’ve gone so far around the bend in the future that such terms are gross profanities? Still, hearing a hardened black-ops killer refer to his foes with terms best kept to “Salute Your Shorts” in the middle of a bloody firefight in a town of artificial whores and killers who dress like Jazz Age slicksters all in response to chaos in Walt Disney’s initial vision of Epcot taken to the nth degree - well, I guess it’s kind of fitting, though it can’t help but remind me of seeing %$@!& showing up in “Promethea”. Whatever; it’s a fun book.